Chomsky explains reasons behind US animus towards ’Independent Iran’

Noam Chomsky, well-known American historian and Philosopher, says the US is animus towards Iran because Washington cannot put up with an independent state in West Asia.

Professor Chomsky, in an interview to Tom Dispatch website, said ” Iran has long been regarded by US leaders, and by US media commentary, as extraordinarily dangerous, perhaps the most dangerous country on the planet,” because the Islamic Republic supports resistance movements, such as Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas, and is interested in nuclear technology.

Explaining American Leaders’, Including Trump’s, stance on Iran the veteran expert said, “In the doctrinal system, Iran is a dual menace: it is the leading supporter of terrorism, and its nuclear programs pose an existential threat to Israel, if not the whole world. It is so dangerous that Obama had to install an advanced air defense system near the Russian border to protect Europe from Iranian nuclear weapons — which don’t exist, and which, in any case, Iranian leaders would use only if possessed by a desire to be instantly incinerated in return.”

Chomsky, however, denounced the US doctrinal system saying that “In the real world, Iranian support for terrorism translates to support for Hezbollah, whose major crime is that it is the sole deterrent to yet another destructive Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and for Hamas, which won a free election in the Gaza Strip — a crime that instantly elicited harsh sanctions and led the US government to prepare a military coup.”

As the famous historian said the major crimes of Hamas and Hezbollah movements, both blacklisted as terrorist by the US, are standing firm against Israeli regime’s aggressive manner.

Zionists have always been seeking to form “Great Israel,” also referred as “Promised Land” by Jews.

According to the founding father of Zionism Theodore Herzl, “the area of the Jewish State stretches: From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates,” that comprises Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, Yemen, most of Turkey, and all the land east of the Nile river.

If there were not resistance movements like Hamas and Hezbollah, Zionists would have been occupying most of West Asia (Middle East) today.

Saying that “the doctrinal system falls apart on inspection,” Noam Chomsky explained the US animus toward Iran by saying that “The United States and Israel cannot tolerate an independent force in a region that they take to be theirs by right.”

He went on to explain “the core of the tale,” of US animus towards Iran, saying “Iran cannot be forgiven for overthrowing the dictator installed by Washington in a military coup in 1953, a coup that destroyed Iran’s parliamentary regime and its unconscionable belief that Iran might have some claim on its own natural resources”.

In 1953 a US-sponsored coup overthrew Mohammad Mossadegh— Iran’s first democratically-elected prime minister. Mossadegh ventured to nationalize Iran’s oil industry. This did not suit the West, particularly Britain. So MI6 urged the CIA to take action which ended in Operation Ajax. This ruined the Iranians’ first democratic experience and fuelled public resentment.

The CIA made a public statement 60 years later confessing that “the military coup that overthrew Mossadegh … was carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government.”

Even worse, the US helped sustain the dead Iranian dictator, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, also known as Shah (king), in power as an absolute monarch who with his secret police, SAVAK—formed with the assistance of the CIA and Mossad—proved to be a dictator by torturing and killing dissents.

However to America’s dismay, Iranian nation led by late Ayatollah Khomeini managed to topple West-backed Pahlavi dynasty in 1979 and establish an independent state that has dealt heavy blows to US Imperialistic interests during past 39 years.

Touching on US longstanding animosity towards the Muslim nation, the American historian stated “It also wouldn’t hurt to recall that in the past six decades, scarcely a day has passed when Washington was not tormenting Iranians. After the 1953 military coup came US support for a dictator described by Amnesty International as a leading violator of fundamental human rights. Immediately after his overthrow came the US-backed invasion of Iran by Saddam Hussein, no small matter. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians were killed, many by chemical weapons. Reagan’s support for his friend Saddam was so extreme that when Iraq attacked a US ship, the USS Stark, killing 37 American sailors, it received only a light tap on the wrist in response. Reagan also sought to blame Iran for Saddam’s horrendous chemical warfare attacks on Iraqi Kurds.”

In September 1980, Iraq’s former dictator Saddam Hussein, getting green light from the US, attacked neighboring Iran. The war lasted for 8 years and cost lives of more than one million people on both sides.

“Eventually, the United States intervened directly in the Iran-Iraq War, leading to Iran’s bitter capitulation. Afterward, George H. W. Bush invited Iraqi nuclear engineers to the United States for advanced training in nuclear weapons production — an extraordinary threat to Iran, quite apart from its other implications. And, of course, Washington has been the driving force behind harsh sanctions against Iran that continue to the present day,” Chomsky said.

He also denounced the US incumbent President’s anti-Iranian rhetoric and stances saying, “Trump, for his part, has joined the harshest and most repressive dictators in shouting imprecations at Iran. As it happens, Iran held an election during his Middle East travel extravaganza — an election which, however flawed, would be unthinkable in the land of his Saudi hosts, who also happen to be the source of the radical Islamism that is poisoning the region. But U.S. animus against Iran goes far beyond Trump himself. It includes those regarded as the “adults” in the Trump administration, like James “Mad Dog” Mattis, the secretary of defense. And it stretches a long way into the past.”

Chomsky also rebuked Saudi Arabia, US major West Asian ally and Iran’s rival, as “a brutal dictatorship, miserably repressive (notoriously so for women’s rights, but in many other areas as well)”. He said despite the Arab country’s terrible human rights record, Saudi Arabia “is the kind of place where Trump feels right at home”.

Chomsky also slammed US trip to Riyadh, where he inked a 320 billion dollar arms deal with the kingdom, saying “The trip produced promises of massive weapons sales — greatly cheering the Constituency — and vague intimations of other Saudi gifts. One of the consequences was that Trump’s Saudi friends were given a green light to escalate their disgraceful atrocities in Yemen and to discipline Qatar, which has been a shade too independent of the Saudi masters. Iran is a factor there. Qatar shares a natural gas field with Iran and has commercial and cultural relations with it, frowned upon by the Saudis and their deeply reactionary associates.”